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More than 120 leading religious scholars and academics from across the Muslim world have issued an open letter to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. The 17-page document condemns 24 acts committed by the extremist group that are in violation of Islam.

On eve of the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2011 attacks, President Barack Obama outlined a four-part strategy for destroying the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, now known simply as the Islamic State (IS).

Algeria’s Islamists have had limited political success since the Arab Spring, especially compared with the initial electoral gains by Islamists elsewhere in the Middle East. The main problem is their own political rivalry.

The two best known Islamist groups in the Middle East today are the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Despite their common Islamist labels, however, the two movements have vastly different origins, political platforms and social agendas.

On August 1, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz called on the international community to take a united stance against terrorism. His statement, read on live television by a state television anchor, seemed to refer to the actions of the so-called Islamic State. The extremist Sunni militant group has taken control of large swaths of Syria and Iraq in recent months and has begun to enforce its ultra-strict interpretation of Islamic law on the local population.

The Turkish public is split over how Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is leading the country, according to a new Pew Research survey. His party, the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been the driving force in Turkish politics for a decade.

Relations between Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood have become strained as geopolitical realities have shifted in the Middle East, according to a new report by Senem Aydın-Düzgit of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Jordan’s monarchy, having survived the initial wave of Arab uprisings in 2011, is now “confident that it can maintain stability without making major compromises on political or institutional reforms,” according to a new paper by Tareq al Naimat, a visiting journalist at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.